


Tinderbox

by flowerdeluce



Category: The Duellists (1977)
Genre: Dream Sex, M/M, Night On Fic Mountain 2019, Post-Canon, Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-22
Updated: 2019-04-22
Packaged: 2020-01-22 20:30:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,227
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18534940
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flowerdeluce/pseuds/flowerdeluce
Summary: He does not consider his verbal contract with Feraud an escape. That was a long-awaited and honourable victory. Armand cannot shake the man from his thoughts, however, cannot rid himself of the disturbances plaguing his rest.





	Tinderbox

**Author's Note:**

  * For [skazka](https://archiveofourown.org/users/skazka/gifts).



The first time he dreams of Feraud, it is a miscellany of images, unthreaded and unbidden, like the fragments of memory that burst to mind like gunpowder flashes in the heat of a duel. It is not quite what one would call a dream, as it is not quite what one would call sleep. After a night spent awake awaiting one’s death, squeezing all the joy one can from the sleeping face of one’s wife and the beat of a hammer to a sole, rest is remarkably broken. Armand considers it a collection of naps.

He does not presume to know the man. He trusts that his wife and child are in no danger from Feraud. Time has passed slowly since they parted, a man declared dead and one who may go on to duel again, and Armand does not suspect Feraud the kind to linger when there is no honour riding on it. Rarely does he survey the grounds on horseback or ask the keepers if they have seen any intruders. Rarely.

A dream, in Armand’s opinion, equates to nothing more than the collected offcuts of the prior day. Leonie would like to hear his dreams, interpret them as she saw fit and apply meaning where there was none. A window could denote a change on the horizon: a promotion, a death, a journey. A flower might foresee fertility. Armand will not hear of it. A dream of his fingertip tracing the white scar on Feraud’s forehead bears no profundity. He does not tell Leonie of it, but if he did, and if she were to construe some explanation, he suspects she might say it was due to guilt for striking a man in such a noticeable place. Armand will not hear of that either.

The hard, blue skin of a frozen soldier is a troublesome image to scrub from the mind. Armand saw countless horrors in war; he has seen many more in peacetime; it was the Russian winter that put the fear of God in him. You can outrun a madman, dodge a blade and duck beneath a cannonball. You cannot avoid winter’s bitter sting. You cannot will your body to ignore the kind of chill that blisters flesh and makes teeth fall from gums. You cannot ask or order the cold to kindly stop bothering you or yell at it until it scampers away. Things you have no hope of escaping are the most chilling of all.

He does not consider his verbal contract with Feraud an escape. That was a long-awaited and honourable victory. Armand cannot shake the man from his thoughts, however, cannot rid himself of the disturbances plaguing his rest.

Sometimes, he wonders if his unfinished business with Feraud kept his heart beating in Russia, as who can die with their honour in question? No gentleman, for sure. Neither of them was permitted to die until the matter was settled. It was unjust. Uncouth.

One dream recurs. A line of silver birches stands as straight as dominoes ready to fall. Mist creeps along the frosted terrain; Armand’s mount expels small clouds of white from her nostrils. Feraud’s horse shifts on its feet as impatient as its rider, grinding at the bit, awaiting the spurs. Sweat pools on Armand’s trembling palms. Their seconds never call the advance, however. The horses never charge. If they even take a step, Armand wakes, nightshirt soaked through, prick as rigid as a sabre’s hilt — the thrill of almost winning, he tells himself.

He rides out to the ruins when he has the time to spare, stalks around the hillside’s wild foliage, searching. On the return journey he is often beset with thoughts of missing something, some breadcrumb clue leading him to signs of Feraud’s demise, to Feraud’s further taunting of him. To Feraud.

One morning, Adele tells him he called out a man’s name in his sleep. He does not recall the dream. She asks after him. Who is he? A fallen comrade, he explains, and she places her hand on his in comfort.

There is one thought that persists some nights, keeps his eyes fixed on the darkness. Had he not professed to know Feraud, not sought him out to deliver the general’s order, where might he be at this moment? There is no way of knowing, though he cannot fathom any path his life may have followed otherwise. If he can, it leads him back to Feraud. Another place. Another time. Duelling over beer or wine spilled in inebriation. A duel Armand calls because he so desires one. Inevitable.

This dream sparks like a tinderbox, ablaze at once from darkness. Orange candlelight throws shadows softened by a pair of pegged uniforms, pools of rainwater forming beneath dripping sashes, shirtsleeves and gold braid, the hearth belching heat. Armand’s legs, working as they once did, bracket Feraud’s waist. No cloth trappings obscure their view of the other. No weapons are drawn. If they are to fight, they will fight with their hands.

Soldiers are no strangers to this sort of intimacy, that which is shared between two men and no further, that mimics the love of a woman and occasionally exceeds it. Armand has been told he is attractive, has let a man talk him to bed but a few times in his life. Feraud speaks not a word.

Lips part against the scar on Armand’s shoulder. A hot tongue traces the raised, jagged flesh, passion inflamed by the mark he made. No apologies.

They share a look Armand once dreaded, then ached for: a deep and immediate thirst for overwhelming the other, impulsive and preposterous and bone-deep. Be the victor. Have the gall to take up the challenge. Well, then.

Feraud’s thick, greased prick slides in slow and when it’s buried, Armand pushes the other man down by his shoulders and holds him still, eyes fixed on dark irises that appear liquid gold in the dancing candlelight. His long fingers brush the curls peppering the wide plane of Feraud’s chest, a short distance from his throat. They linger, curious, Feraud’s eyes challenging him. His is a neck Armand would gladly choke; it would be a simple matter of wrapping his hands around it and gripping tight, pressing his thumbs in.

As their bodies move together, the taste of their two-man war within a war floods Armand’s tongue, lifts the small fair hairs from his skin until they stand at attention. It drips from him like the rainwater from their drenched linen, bleeds the scent of fresh sweat into the damp air. He delights in Feraud’s fingernails digging in at his waist, leaving indentations as his hips arch up in movements sharp and unrelenting. It is either a desire to hurt or a need to suppress the flow of sounds they both make that compels him, sounds akin to those a man makes when run through with a sword, floating in a harmony of breaths and gasps, swallowed whimpers and low, inelegant grunts.

His fingers twist in the wild locks of his comrade and enemy’s soot-black hair as his end approaches and they still together, on ecstasy’s cusp, waiting for the other to spend first, to lose an unspoken wager that has nothing at all to do with honour and everything to do with lust.

Only when Armand wakes does he discover who has lost.


End file.
